u/Calmly-Stressed

My god, what a book. It took me a good while to get into it and it was a slow burn, but I couldn’t put it down after a while, and it moved me deeply. What a beautiful and thought-provoking read.

I am particularly impressed by Le Guin’s masterful way of playing with perception through clever perspective-switching. You start off thinking Genly Ai is a reliable narrator and a good guy. It’s even easy to overlook his pretty blatant misogyny. Then slowly you realise his perspective is incredibly limited and limiting, and he is frequently just plain wrong or self-sabotaging. This takes the book from a simple hero’s journey to a much more complex and interesting reflection on culture, communication and the (im)possibility of understanding one another. I loved it, but it’s also a pretty challenging read that I imagine isn’t for everyone. I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on it.

Also, this was my first Le Guin - what should I read next?

Hi sub, visiting Taiwan for the first time at the start of October and I’m trying to puzzle together a couple of days around Alishan, but there’s quite a few things I’m unclear about - hope you can give me some clarity! For context I’m a solo female, love hiking and in reasonable shape, would love to see some great views and beautiful nature.

I understand Chiayi is a good starting point, I’ll probably stay there for a night before ploughing deeper into the mountains. I also understand the train is the recommended way up, and tickets will be available two weeks in advance - the date for booking is in my calendar. However this is where I’m getting a bit lost.

- Fenqihu looks interesting, but it looks like you can only book the train up to Fenqihu 3 days out. Is that risky/likely to be sold out?

- What do I do with my main suitcase if I go up into this area? Hotels look very spread out, luggage seems inconvenient. is there somewhere to store luggage in Chiayi so I can go up with only a backpack?

- What’s up with hotels in Alishan? Nearly everything has abominable ratings. Any tips for better places/areas to stay?

- So many trails and hikes I’m getting lost in the brass, which ones are amazing and how are the logistics? Are they out and back or loops? Which apps are good for hiking in Taiwan?

- I do have the option to rent a car and self-drive instead, is this a good idea or not advisable?

Thanks for your help and sorry if some of these questions are silly - I’ve been reading a lot of advice and websites but I can’t quite wrap my head around the logistics.

I wrote this as a long-ass comment for someone but I thought it might have wider use, so turning it into a post. This was a one-week solo road trip starting from Rinku Town by Kansai Airport. The aim was rural exploration, hiking, finding great views and going off the beaten path.

Day 1 - Drive from Kansai Airport to Mt Kongo, visit Montbell in Gojo on the way, hike up and down Kongo (from the old ropeway side), drive to Gose and stay the night at Yado Charinko.

• This was a lovely day although the hike up Kongo from that side is very steep.
• I ended up in Gose for the night without really knowing anything about it, but it's a quaint old village where they've revived a bunch of the old buildings and turned them into lodging, plus they've reopened the old sento bathhouse. I had the guesthouse to myself, a beautifully renovated old bike shop, and a sento visit was included in my stay.
• The only slightly tricky thing was dinner, as there are a few very fancy restaurants in the village and not much else. Planning in advance here would be better; I did manage to eat in the end.
• It was a pretty cool place to stay if somewhat random. It seems to be mostly an attraction for Japanese people interested in the local history and a more upscale weekend away.

Day 2 - Drive all the way down Route 168 to Totsukawa. Visit Tanize suspension bridge and Labo cafe on the way. Enjoy onsen in Totsukawa.

• Another lovely day, I'd gotten inspiration from Currently Hannah's videos for this part of the trip (I recommend watching them).
• The suspension bridge was a little scary but worth it to get up to Labo Cafe, which has really lovely owners and great food and coffee.
• I stayed in a place called 大森の郷 (o-mori no Sato), basically a small house. It was really lovely but it was also at the top of a pretty scary narrow road with a drop to one side and pretty much no passing places. I managed to get up and down it twice without running into anyone, but given the speed that the tiny garbage truck raced up the road at one point, you could get rather unlucky. The house is located in a little hamlet about 10 minutes up the mountain from Totsukawa; very scenic and cute, but there is nothing up there, so it's really just for sleeping.
• Totsukawa village down below has two great onsens. I recommend visiting them before you drive up to the lodge so you don't have to do the route twice**.**

Day 3 - drive up to Hatenashi village for the views, then down through Kumano Hongu Taisha to Nachi Falls. Stay in Nachikatsuura. Visit a great onsen.

• Again, I'd seen Hatenashi in a video, and while it is very beautiful up there, I don't really think it was worth the drive. It's just a nice little pass on one of the Kumano Kodo routes, but I think it would feel cooler if you're actually hiking the route rather than coming to intrude on the local residents for the views (the hike runs through their fields and backyards). I felt a bit awkward.
• Nachi was very much worth the visit, I did the little loop hike around the temples and down to the waterfall. It's quite touristy, but that's understandable for such a beautiful place. Despite that it still felt very sacred and spiritual.
• I stayed at Pension Sora in Nachikatsuura, which overlooks the sea. It's a cool place to stay with a very nice owner. He recommended a great local tuna restaurant and the best onsen.
• I drove to said onsen, Kyukamura Nanki-Katsura, which is a fancy hotel with a day-use onsen. This is one of the most scenic onsens I've ever been to: it is set on a cliff and overlooks the rugged ocean. Top tier.
• On the way there I visited the Ugui visitor centre as well, which is a nice way to learn about the area's geology and biodiversity.

Day 4 - Drive to Kumano, do a little loop hike of the Matsumoto Pass and Onigajo, drive to Mihama and stay in the middle of nowhere.

• The Matsumoto pass is known as one of the most scenic parts of the Kumano Kodo because it still has a very old paved road through the forest. I parked at Onigajo (2nd parking lot nearest the main road is free), hiked across the pass, came back down on the other side and then walked back to the car via the Onigajo cliff formations. A really lovely loop with good views above and fascinating geology below. This probably took about 3 hours at a very leisurely pace.
• I stayed at さぎりと星空の宿, a pretty big house in a small hamlet of a village with absolutely nothing to see or do. A very cool place to stay with wonderful mountain views out of the window, but the little road leading up to it is challenging (Google maps also sends you wrong through the rice paddies at first, when you can actually just turn up from the main road), and the angle of the driveway makes it really hard to get back onto the road and down. I also had to call the owner to know how to get the key, so this isn't a good option if you don't speak Japanese or don't have a Japanese phone number.

Day 5 - had to improvise here, as the original plan was to drive up to Mt Odaigahara and stay at the hut at the top, but I had to cancel due to dangerously inclement weather. I ended up driving back down to the Kumano Hongu Taisha area and spending a good chuck of the day in Watarase Onsen before driving back up to Tenkawa.

• Watarase Onsen is wonderful, it's the largest open air bath in west Japan. It rained hard all day, so sitting in an onsen was the only activity I could think of that made sense since anything else outdoors was out of the question. I did get stuck in traffic on the way out, since there had been an accident and the roads clog up quickly.
• I booked a place called Post Inn in Tenkawa quite last minute, but I didn't think it was very nice, so I wouldn't recommend it. In fact, this entire day was improvised, so it's not like the route made much sense since I just ended up driving back up the way I came down. The roads around Tenkawa are also all exceptionally narrow and driving in the pouring rain was not fun.

Day 6 - Drove to Yoshino, went to see the mountain and its temples, stayed at Houtouji temple.

• Yoshino is famous for its cherry blossoms, which I was much too late for, so it's not actually that interesting in off season. The village at the top is decently interesting to browse for snacks and souvenirs, and some of the temples and shrines are beautiful, but you could feel that it's the sort of place that is only really alive 2-3 weeks a year. One of the temples was also crazy expensive to get into, so I didn't.
• Houtouji was a wonderful place to stay. The priest and his wife are incredibly friendly and the food was delicious. Again, bit of a scary road to get there (theme of the trip) but worth it for the hospitality and the friendly cat and goat. I woke up for the morning service and they dedicated a prayer for safety to their guests (there's only 3-4 rooms so it's all very homely and cosy).

Day 7 - drove back to drop the car.

My main takeaway from the trip was that I found it quite tiring to move accommodations each day. If you do something similar, I would recommend adding in a few places where you stay two nights to reduce fatigue. You could easily stay in the Hongu Taisha area and do day trips by car from there (nb. I didn't actually visit Hongu Taisha on this trip because I was about to hike part of the Kumano Kodo the next week, but that's obviously a huge draw and a must see if you're in the area).

All in all, I spent a whole week and didn't even nearly cover everything to see on Kii peninsula - I stayed mostly in the central part, while there's tons to see on the west coast as well, and more stretches of hiking that you can do as day hikes on the east coast. You could easily fill a schedule with some bits of my trip + some bigger attractions on other parts of the peninsula. There's no need to go quite as rural as I did, although it was a fun experience.

Biggest recommendations: Kumano Hongu Taisha, Nachi Falls, Matsumoto pass + Onigajo, the Kyukamura onsen, Houtouji.

Would not recommend: Tenkawa (unless you wanna go fishing I guess), Hatenashi, moving accommodation every day, getting stuck on a driveway because the turn is so sharp.

[To be clear, this is not another Sanderson shitpost; I think he is in many respects a very good writer, to the point where I have read 10 of his books in the last half year. But a lot of his decision-making baffles me, and I'd like to talk about it with some nuance, if possible.]

*Warning, tons of spoilers for all of Mistborn, up to and including The Lost Metal*

There's a lot to say, but my main argument centres on this: >!killing off Kelsier in the first book of Mistborn 1 was the best decision Sanderson could have made. Bringing him back as some sort of demi-ghost-god who keeps trying to scheme and influence things was just about the worst thing he could have done.!<

When I read the original Mistborn trilogy, I was totally gripped by it. I loved the sense of adventure, discovering the intricacies of the world, the magic system. By book 3, I got a little disappointed that everything suddenly went on a cosmic/divine scale, which I already thought detracted from the gravity of the story. It's quite hard to sell the concept of nearly-all-powerful divine beings who constantly influence everything and have various levels of omniscience and foresight, but can still be bested by humans in the very nick of time.

But then Mistborn era 2 just doubles down on that and starts relegating just about everything to the gods. The plots just became more and more needlessly complicated in order to keep stacking the 'gotcha' moments and big reveals. Then Secret History goes and makes everything even more opaque and needlessly complex.

This makes me sad, because some of the character work was genuinely great - the way Wax and Steris' relationship develops is lovely, and Wayne is delightful, with the chapters written from his unreliable narrator point of view a highlight. But it's as if Sanderson doesn't trust his human-level character work and plotting enough, and thinks he needs an added layer of intrigue and mystery to somehow interconnect all of his work and make people keep reading.

The thing is, in the foreword to Secret History, Sanderson himself admits that he was wary of writing that story and bringing back Kelsier since it risks complications and contradictions - but then for some reason he went and did it anyway. To me this is like a painter unable to recognise when the painting is finished and just adding more and more layers of paint with increasingly worse results.

Am I alone in feeling like Mistborn 2 would have worked so much better as a simple standalone series, with some fun nods to era 1 for keen readers, without having to lift everything to crazy complex intergalactic divine levels? Or do you enjoy the cosmic intertwining? Would love to hear some thoughts.

This post was inspired by reading Connie Willis’ Doomsday Book (which, by the way, is great). I was confused when I first read it without knowing when it was written, because the society she writes (in the book’s ‘present’, >!not the time travel bit of course!<) feels modern, but a large part of the plot hinges on (very minor spoilers ahead) people not being able to reach each other because the phone lines are blocked or because they’re not at the phone when the other person calls, or the connection cuts etc - even though the phones do have a video screen and you can see the other person. Took me a while to realise it was written well before mobile phones, and while Willis correctly predicted the video calling component, she couldn’t imagine phones being mobile. Reading it now, it’s a bit bemusing.

Any other examples of fun cases like this where the author was kinda right but also kinda wrong? Or just where a tech innovation seems anachronistic now?

* I use the terms prediction and anachronism loosely here - obviously stories are fiction and not trying to predict the future accurately, but this one was amusing to me.

I’m a few chapters into Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and I’m not clicking with the writing style at all at the moment. The very observational, subjective, dispassionate writing style makes me not care at all or connect with any of the characters. It’s like they have no emotions at all themselves, from the way the story is narrated.

Anyone else have this issue? Does it change for the better? Not feeling super motivated to keep reading it at the moment but I see a lot of people saying it’s so moving and heartbreaking, I’m just wondering where that’s coming from.

EDIT: Thanks good people of r/books! DNF it is.

I see everyone raving about how hilarious DCC is so I decided to give it a try. I’m about 10 chapters deep and I just… don’t think it’s very funny? The concept is original and occasionally something is vaguely amusing, but so far it’s not exactly gripping me or making me laugh all that much. It feels a lot like it’s written for 25 year old American white men, none of which is close to my demographic, so perhaps that doesn’t help. If anything, it makes me want to go play an RPG, rather than read through one.

Is it worth sticking with it or am I unlikely to enjoy it if I‘m not that into it right now? I’m aware it’s a multi-book commitment so I don’t really want to get too deep if this is the level of humour it stays with.

TL;DR: GW crowds are barely noticeable on the Kumano Kodo, it's a great activity to avoid GW-related overcrowding. Japanese people barely walk the Kumano Kodo.

Since my Japanese friend could only get enough time off during GW, we decided to walk part of the Nakahechi (Ayukawa to Hongu over three days). We were worried that it would be super busy, but this worry turned out to be baseless.

GW has almost no effect on the Kumano Kodo because Japanese people barely walk it to begin with. Few Japanese know about it and even regular hikers don't seem that interested, they usually favour actual peaks. This surprised me a lot, but all the guesthouse owners said the same - they are surprised when they get a Japanese visitor as it's so rare.

There were quite a lot of people at Hongu Taisha and the Kuroshio train back out of Kii-Tanabe was also fully booked, so people do go and visit these famous spots, but most don't seem to walk the entire trail. It seems that people mostly know about the KK because of the dual pilgrimage with the Camino, and a vast majority of people come to walk it to get their certificate.

We did struggle a bit with accommodation since we only booked about two months out, but we managed to find guesthouses in Kurisugawa, Nonaka and Hongu without too much issue. We were also worried about the bus back to Kii-Tanabe being crowded, and while most of the seating was occupied, it wasn't full beyond that (mid-afternoon).

If anyone's interested in my specific walking experience I'm happy to expand the post, but I mostly came to relate the trail conditions during GW in case anyone in coming years is worried about this. Just make sure to reserve the train in and out a couple of days in advance, since the Kuroshio is reserved seating only. Beyond that, GW seems like an ideal time to do the hike. We had great weather too.